Question Build advice for dual Xeon Silver motherboard

jblackmd

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I am looking to upgrade one of my rigs. It currently has a Gigabyte Z97 Game Ready 5/ i7 4790. I would like to install a server type of motherboard as the rig does a lot of rendering and has three 1080 Ti video cards. It seems like the Xeon Silver 4208 is a good chip, and I want a dual cpu setup. It doesn't seem like there are a ton of choices out there, but I was considering either the ASUS WS C621E Sage Extreme Power or the Supermicro X11DPH-T. My case is a Coolermaster Haf X, which I'm fairly certain can accommodate either board, and it has an EVGA 1200W Platinum psu.

Any build advice would be appreciated. I've built rigs before but never with this kind of motherboard.
 
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kanewolf

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I am looking to upgrade one of my rigs. It currently has a Gigabyte Z97 Game Ready 5/ i7 4790. I would like to install a server type of motherboard as the rig does a lot of rendering and has three 1080 Ti video cards. It seems like the Xeon Silver 4208 is a good chip, and I want a dual cpu setup. It doesn't seem like there are a ton of choices out there, but I was considering either the ASUS WS C621E Sage Extreme Power or the Supermicro X11DPH-T. My case is a Coolermaster Haf X, which I'm fairly certain can accommodate either board, and it has an EVGA 100W Platinum psu.

Any build advice would be appreciated. I've built rigs before but never with this kind of motherboard.
You get 16 cores and 32 threads. You can get that with a single Threadripper (or even Ryzen). You will have higher memory bandwidth with the Xeon, but to realize that bandwidth, you have to buy 12 DIMMs.
You can get the PCIe lanes with a TR.
 

nofanneeded

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Dont go dual CPU motherboard when you can get the same numbers of cores in a single CPU...

you will pay more for nothing ..

you will pay at least $300 more for motherboard.
you will have to populate RAM for BOTH CPU's
you will pay more for dual CPU models (50% more price) of the same CPU and number of cores and clocks

and at the end you will add latency from the distance between the two CPUs on the motherboard and the limitations of connecting them together.
 

jblackmd

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So, a single Xeon then? I do want it to be a Xeon workstation style system. It has to be very rugged, as not uncommonly it could be rendering all day long. It has to have no issues running three graphic cards. I use it for a comic business, and I want to get away from consumer grade stuff. I won't say money is no object, but it is December and and business has been good enough that I do need to dump some capital for tax reasons.
 

kanewolf

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So, a single Xeon then? I do want it to be a Xeon workstation style system. It has to be very rugged, as not uncommonly it could be rendering all day long. It has to have no issues running three graphic cards. I use it for a comic business, and I want to get away from consumer grade stuff. I won't say money is no object, but it is December and and business has been good enough that I do need to dump some capital for tax reasons.
Have you thought about other aspects of your infrastructure? Do you already have a full 10GE network? Backup infrastructure, including off-site?
Do you know how many threads your rendering scales, before it is storage limited?
With 2 1080ti cards, you must render a lot on GPUs. Have you looked at usage statistics to see where the limitations in your current implementation are?

I am not trying to dissuade you from your purchase, I am trying to take a holistic view.
 

nofanneeded

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So, a single Xeon then? I do want it to be a Xeon workstation style system. It has to be very rugged, as not uncommonly it could be rendering all day long. It has to have no issues running three graphic cards. I use it for a comic business, and I want to get away from consumer grade stuff. I won't say money is no object, but it is December and and business has been good enough that I do need to dump some capital for tax reasons.

If you insist on xeon system , get a single socket motherboard and get at least 18 cores xeon CPU

you have two options ,

Socket 2066 xeons and socket 3647 socket ...

For socket 3647 , this motherboard from Asus has alot of cool options , including 2x10GB lans ,and three full 16 lanes slots


then choose the Xeon CPU you like to use on it.




 

kanewolf

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So, a single Xeon then? I do want it to be a Xeon workstation style system. It has to be very rugged, as not uncommonly it could be rendering all day long. It has to have no issues running three graphic cards. I use it for a comic business, and I want to get away from consumer grade stuff. I won't say money is no object, but it is December and and business has been good enough that I do need to dump some capital for tax reasons.
If you want to spend some capital, then I would look at an HP Z4. Intel Xeon and next day repairs.
 

jblackmd

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Holistic is fine by me. I have not thought of those aspects, but what I need is a reliable server grade system with as many threads as possible. Basically, at the moment I have two rigs: A threadripper based system with three 2080 ti's that does the bulk of the rendering, and a set up rig that I mainly use to get the scenes ready but can be called upon to render when I'm running behind. Both of them work fine, but the 4790 based system tends to balk at running the three cards in it. Runs two cards fine, three cards not so much. Part of the issue is the Gigabyte MB pasks the cards in tightly, and the middle one gets hot and then the Iray kicks off, so it would be nice to have a board that spaces them out better. I can certainly make the argument that since what I have now works fine there's no need for any further upgrade, but I want a bit more flexibility.
 

kanewolf

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Holistic is fine by me. I have not thought of those aspects, but what I need is a reliable server grade system with as many threads as possible. Basically, at the moment I have two rigs: A threadripper based system with three 2080 ti's that does the bulk of the rendering, and a set up rig that I mainly use to get the scenes ready but can be called upon to render when I'm running behind. Both of them work fine, but the 4790 based system tends to balk at running the three cards in it. Runs two cards fine, three cards not so much. Part of the issue is the Gigabyte MB pasks the cards in tightly, and the middle one gets hot and then the Iray kicks off, so it would be nice to have a board that spaces them out better. I can certainly make the argument that since what I have now works fine there's no need for any further upgrade, but I want a bit more flexibility.
What about replacing the three 1080ti cards with a pair of 3080s or 3090s? That drops to two cards and you get the improved performance of the current gen GPUs.
Those 1080ti cards should be easy to liquidate to offset some of the costs.
 

jblackmd

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I'm absolutely going to replace the cards, probably two 3090's. I'm waiting for the prices to drop a bit. When I'm ready to get them, I would ideally like to put them in a rig with a bit more flexibility. Since it is the rig I use for set up, I have to think that a faster CPU and more RAM would load the scenes faster and have less lag with working them. So yeah, by the end of 2021 the plan would be for this rig to be Xeon based and have two 3090's.
 

jblackmd

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If you insist on xeon system , get a single socket motherboard and get at least 18 cores xeon CPU

you have two options ,

Socket 2066 xeons and socket 3647 socket ...

For socket 3647 , this motherboard from Asus has alot of cool options , including 2x10GB lans ,and three full 16 lanes slots


then choose the Xeon CPU you like to use on it.

I've seen that one. Any issues with using a single CPU in it?
 

nofanneeded

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Holistic is fine by me. I have not thought of those aspects, but what I need is a reliable server grade system with as many threads as possible. Basically, at the moment I have two rigs: A threadripper based system with three 2080 ti's that does the bulk of the rendering, and a set up rig that I mainly use to get the scenes ready but can be called upon to render when I'm running behind. Both of them work fine, but the 4790 based system tends to balk at running the three cards in it. Runs two cards fine, three cards not so much. Part of the issue is the Gigabyte MB pasks the cards in tightly, and the middle one gets hot and then the Iray kicks off, so it would be nice to have a board that spaces them out better. I can certainly make the argument that since what I have now works fine there's no need for any further upgrade, but I want a bit more flexibility.

This motherboard from Supermicro has 2 slots spacing between every 16 lanes slots .. and there are six of them

https://www.supermicro.com/en/products/motherboard/X11DPG-QT
 

nofanneeded

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I've seen that one. Any issues with using a single CPU in it?

here are the supported Xeon CPU's on Asus Motherboard


I've seen that one too. It's pretty much between that one and the Asus.

no no , the motherboard I showed you is HUGE , it needs also a special case from supermicro. it is like a 12 slots motherboad in length instead of seven slots. it has one slot empty space between every two slots.

x11dpg-qt_front_2.jpg
 
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jblackmd

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here are the supported Xeon CPU's on Asus Motherboard




no no , the motherboard I showed you is HUGE , it needs also a special case from supermicro. it is like a 12 slots motherboad in length instead of seven slots. it has one slot empty space between every two slots.

x11dpg-qt_front_2.jpg

It won't fit into a Haf X? I read in some comments for the Asus that it will fit in a Haf x. Isn't this the same size as it?
 

nofanneeded

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It won't fit into a Haf X? I read in some comments for the Asus that it will fit in a Haf x. Isn't this the same size as it?

I was talking about Super Micro Long motherboard that has spacings between each slots.

ASUS Motherboard is CEB with is shorter than EATX and should fit in HAF X case.

CEB is 305mm x 277mm , EATX is (305 × 330 mm )

HAF X takes EATX and CEB
 

nofanneeded

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Ok. Looks like I'm leaning towards the Asus.

this one ?